Chapter One

The man lay naked, unconscious and, inevitably I suppose given the temperature, slightly blue. I knew he was unconscious because anyone in possession of their faculties would at least have flinched, given the way the northerly wind was making his skin pucker into goose pimples the size of marbles. Yep, definitely unconscious, as his ribs were moving. Definitely naked. And most definitely a man.

Oh boy.

I nudged Stan a little closer, keeping my hands firm on his reins to control his approach and ensure he didn’t step on anything sensitive. Under the saddle I could feel him advancing warily, as though naked men were well known among the equine community for their tendency to leap up and shout ‘Boo!’

‘Hello? Can you hear me?’

There was no reply. In fact there was no sound from anywhere except the high, distant song of the skylarks and some faint wind-carried voices from the village of Riverdale tucked like a pimple into the cleavage of the valley below.

I poked Stan with my heels and he inched his nose a little further forward without moving his feet, obeying the spirit of my demand but not the actuality and making it feel as though I was riding a slowly elongating rubber band.

I admitted defeat, dismounted and crept closer over the heather, dragging Stan behind me, although his resentment travelled through his bridle and into my hands.

‘Hello? Are you all right?’ I asked, advancing, then muttering to myself, ‘yeah, Moll, of course he’s all right. He’s out for the count on the Yorkshire Moors with no pants on. That’s a really cracking definition of all right, isn’t it?’

The man continued to lie immobile. His arms were outflung, as if to welcome the chilly wind currently nudging around the dark, sparse hair which smudged across his chest and flickered into a line down over his stomach. His long legs were similarly decorated with dark hair, bony bare feet pointed to the sky and, as I moved further in, I could see his head cushioned on a patch of heather, with eyes closed and more dark hair tangled around the bush’s roots. He looked oddly comfortable spreadeagled over the greening whin and bracken, as though he’d been planted there as some kind of pagan symbol.

Closer examination told me that his face was thin, covered in at least a couple of days worth of stubble and that he had long eyelashes which feathered along the edge of his eye sockets. His ribs were prominent as though he hadn’t eaten a square meal in a while, and a quick glance further down told me that even with the shrinking effects of the March cold he was quite nicely proportioned.

I did the whole ‘basic first aid’ check and there didn’t seem to be anything broken, ruptured or electrocuted, so I took off my fleecy jacket and draped it over him. After a few seconds tugging I managed to get it to cover most of the major areas of immediate concern, while Stan took the opportunity to graze a large circle around me, soup-plate-sized hooves missing treading on either me or the naked man by not very much. One of his feet caught in some fabric half-hidden in the ankle-high undergrowth and I leaned over to disentangle him, only to find that what he’d got wrapped around his fetlock was a leather jacket.

A moment on my hands and knees and I managed to locate some black jeans, a pair of Lycra underpants, which I handled with extreme care, and a baggy grey T-shirt which, if it belonged to the unconscious man, must have only fitted him around the neck.

Stan circled again at the end of his reins and rolled his eyes at the prone figure. The wind tugged his stubby grey mane and twisted his tail into figures of eight. I could feel it drilling through my ears and worming its way under my shirt, the temperature this far up on the moors was probably only in single figures. If it was cold to me, then how much colder must it be for the poor guy lying on the ground? My fingers twitched instinctively towards a mobile phone. Even after eighteen months I still hadn’t quite lost the instinct to use one whenever the going got tough, although the signal this far up on the moors was so erratic that a Ouija board would be more use than an Orange contract. I made a decision.

‘Okay, Stan, you’re not going to like this very much.’ I shortened the reins to reel him closer. ‘But we can’t leave the poor guy to freeze and I can’t carry him down.’

I got a truncated prance in response. Stan was bred to be dourly hardy, not to be highly strung and his attempts at temperament were merely token affairs. Which was just as well, because the next half an hour would have tested the patience of a pit pony, as I shoved, poked, dragged and ultimately wedged the man onto the saddle.

He half-woke at one point, for which I was incredibly grateful; despite the fact he looked like a skeleton that had been working out lately, he was heavy and difficult to manoeuvre and I’d had no luck with trying to persuade Stan to lie down like a camel. I tried to keep my fleece between the man’s skin and my hands, using it a bit like a tea towel to handle a hot baking tray, telling myself I was doing it to keep him warm, rather than to prevent myself touching him because handling this much naked flesh made me a little squeamish. The man’s eyes flickered once, he murmured something that sounded like ‘you ape’, which I thought was a bit ungrateful, then flailed his arms around a bit and I managed to use his random twitches to help get a purchase on the saddle. I had to drape him over it rather than sit him up, and he lay across Stan’s wide back like a load of damp washing, lapsing back into unconsciousness with his head dangling to one stirrup and one hip hooked around the pommel.

I folded his clothes and tried to tuck them underneath him in strategic spots in an attempt to prevent chafing, but I feared that some parts were going to get off Stan with a lot less skin than they’d got on with. The leather jacket I put on myself, the wind was attacking with the fury of an enraged cutlery drawer and I reckoned that naked bloke was really not in any position to complain about my wearing his coat, not when he’d got my fleece protecting what little of his modesty was left far better than the chilly leather would have done.

So, with me tentatively grasping one hairy male ankle to prevent a sudden head-first dismount off the far side, holding Stan’s reins in the other hand and with my shoulder level with a set of buttocks cautiously draped in my bright red fleece, we made our careful way down the bridle path that I had taken up the hill earlier that morning.

Stan was peppered with little patches of sweat that foamed along his neckline and around his girth, but it was nothing to how hot I was getting, imagining the robust responses I would receive if anyone from the village saw me arriving home with a naked man slung across my horse. I mentally practised my ‘insouciant wave’ all the way down – or would it be better to adopt a strictly ‘eyes front’ saunter, as though this sort of thing happened to me all the time, such a bore, yes, yet another naked bloke, yawn yawn …

In the event the village streets were empty, swept free of people by the chill wind and early hour. We reached my garden gate without major mishap and I stood baffled by logistics for a moment. Take the man off and leave him on the ground while I dealt with Stan, or leave Stan tied to the flimsy garden gate while I tried to drag the man inside, like the results of an overkeen Stone Age marriage proposal?

I was saved by Caro slowing her Landrover to drive past the notoriously unskittish Stan and stalling the engine at the sight of my dilemma.

‘Good grief, Molly, what on earth have you been up to?’ She wound down the window and stared, then had to climb out for a closer look. ‘It’s a man. And … is he naked?’

‘I found him up on the moors.’

Caro’s eyebrows went up and down in a sort of ripple effect. ‘Most women just pick the flowers,’ she said faintly. ‘Who is he?’

‘I have no idea. I thought it was more important to stop him dying of hypothermia than to interview him. Particularly with him being unconscious and everything.’

Stan jogged at the end of his reins and there was an embarrassing noise of bare flesh sliding over the damp leather of the saddle. ‘Could you hold on to Stan while I get him down?’

Caro took the reins and Stan instantly began to behave impeccably. Caro was his technical owner and she stood no nonsense from her horses. In the meantime, and with some shoving help from Caro, I dragged my passenger off and down onto the three blades of grass and a dandelion which formed my so-called lawn.

‘Now what?’

I looked up at Caro. ‘I’m going to get him inside.’

Caro slowly shook her cropped head. ‘You could just leave him there. People would think you’d got another gnome. An extremely anatomically correct one.’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘I’m sure I recognise him, you know.’

‘What?’

‘There’s something familiar about him …’

‘It had better be his face you are referring to, Caroline Edwards, or you are going to have such a lot of explaining to do.’

She clicked her fingers. ‘I know. He’s that bloke who’s been camping out in the empty house at the end of the village, up near the main road. You know, old Mr Patterdale’s place. I’ve seen him wandering in and out a couple of times when I’ve been riding by.’

‘I thought you said it was a tramp, squatting.’

‘Oh, yeah, and this is so clearly a multi-billionaire with his own yacht and a Swiss bank account.’ She looked down at the hairy acres of skin lying at my feet. ‘Take him round there. Leave him on his own lawn.’

‘I can’t leave him, he might swallow his tongue or something. Anyway, I ought to get him to hospital. He’s unconscious, Caro. Something must have happened to him up there.’

Stan shifted and the pair of underpants which I’d squeezed between naked guy’s torso and the saddle, fell off and landed at Caro’s feet.

She sniffed. ‘I’ll take Stan and put him away for you. You’ve clearly got your hands full,’ she said, giving a sidelong glance at the collapsed figure now decorating my front garden. ‘But I think you’re bonkers, of course.’

‘Thanks.’

‘For thinking you’re bonkers?’

‘For looking after Stan. He’s a bit hot, walking down off the hills with a body on board, he might need cooling off.’

Caro gave me another arch look. ‘Yeah, Moll. Right now Stan is the least of my worries. I know I told you that you should go out and find yourself a man, but I rather hoped you’d find one that was actually, you know, upright.’

‘I didn’t exactly go looking. He can’t help being unconscious anyway.’ I bent down and got my arms under the man’s armpits.

‘But you could have found yourself a man with money. Or at least loose change.’ She glanced down. ‘’Cos if this guy has any cash, I really don’t want to think about where he might be keeping it.’ Caro was still standing by the gate, watching my efforts at naked man dragging with an element of scorn on her face. ‘Talking of which, mind out for his arse, it’s dragging along the concrete there.’

‘Thank you so much,’ I puffed, inching the body another few feet towards my front door, ‘for your kind attention.’

‘Just saying. After having done a few miles bent over that saddle he’s going to have some interesting chafing. You don’t want to add to it with cement-burn.’ She was leaning against Stan now, nodding slowly as though giving me marks out of ten.

I adjusted the red fleece which kept inching down his midsection. For some reason I didn’t want the complete nature of his nakedness exposed to my friend. She’d probably insist on going off for a tape measure. ‘It’ll be okay once I get him inside.’

‘If you’re sure.’

I bent my head to redouble my pulling efforts and heard the gentle scuffle and clop as she turned Stan round and began to lead him across the road to the stable yard where he lived, when he wasn’t terrorising local dogs.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ I apologised to the prostrate figure I was jerkily tugging by the arms up the three steps to the door. ‘Call it a panic response. Actually you’ll probably call it friction burns, but you’re not exactly in a position to complain right now.’

Another lengthy yank and we’d reached the top of the steps. The door handle dropped under my elbow pressure, I never bothered locking it because burglary around here was almost unheard of. The Neighbourhood Watch was made up entirely of very attentive little old ladies who would have pestered any burglar to death by calling around mid break-in to ask him impertinent personal questions. Besides, not locking doors meant that I didn’t have to worry about losing my keys somewhere in the forty square miles of moorland, whilst trying to force Stan into something approaching a canter.

I half-fell over the threshold with the top half of my burden. The lower half jammed briefly on the draught proofing but, with the added advantage of less friction once we’d hit the lino of the hall, I managed to slide the entire length of him, with an indescribable amount of noise, as far as the bottom of the stairs before I collapsed, panting against the banisters.

‘This,’ I gasped, ‘is not as much fun as it’s going to sound when I come to tell it.’ I put my hands on my thighs and tried to get my breath back. ‘Although it does score highly on the “guess what happened to me today” scale.’

There was no answer from my recumbent visitor. He just lay spreadeagled along the black and white plastic floor, like a fallen Greek statue, only one with better detailing and, well, rather more lifelike proportions. He wasn’t that tall, several inches off six feet at a guess, and well-muscled, like someone who’s cared about how they look. But his arms and legs were spidery, his hip bones jutted up like a couple of kerbstones and the individual bones of his fingers showed under his skin where his hands curled in upon themselves, as though he was preparing to punch someone as soon as he came round. If he’d looked after his appearance once, it had been a while ago.

Caro was right, he did look rough.

I waited until my heart rate had steadied and then, using an undignified combination of pull and shove, got him through the narrow doorway into my living room, where at least he was lying on carpet.

I dashed upstairs, pulled the duvet from the spare bed and tore down again, using the duvet to replace the red fleece, which really wasn’t cutting it in the covering up man bits stakes and kept giving me interesting glimpses of what lay beneath, like an impromptu burlesque show.

Trying to remember everything I’d ever learned about hypothermia, I rolled the bloke up in the duvet so that his head protruded from one end like the contents of a tube of toothpaste and tucked the lower end around his feet, then leaned back on my heels to appreciate my handiwork.

His eyes were open and he was watching me.